Organisms learn to avoid unpleasant or hurtful stimuli. A princess removes from her bed the pea affronting delicate, royal skin. Rotting, aching teeth can be extracted by various means: lay and professional. But it's been only with the rise of modern medicine and surgery that we have been able to treat some of the causes of profound suffering that lie in remote and previously inaccessible parts of the body. This has led me to wonder, "What is the evolutionary function of such deep pain?"

"The Problem with Pain"

By Eugene E. Lemcio

What Mind or Force laid milesof sleek neuronic tracks to servetrunk lines and boondock junctions yetcontrived to mark the vital routes “One Way:”to make deliveries but not allow exchange?

Who authorized a mouse to pluckthe thorn that pierced a lion’s pawand lets kids yank a rotting tooth by home-style remedyof string and slamming door (all free of charge)but won’t remove the hurt of cleaving leucocytes,despite the largest dose of chemotherapy or morphia?

Let us give unbegrudging thanksfor all those victims who at last survive.But what of generations past and current tribeswho never could nor can respondto suffering profound as this?

Are they and we descendants ofa line of beasts and homo sapiens--from which we by default devolved--whose conscious thought, or autonomic flex(or way of life) defeated cellsgone wild in helpless viscera?

Or was our judgment to evolvewith symmetry deplete:sophisticated systems of alarmthat lead us to the sourcebut don’t effect the cure?

Eugene Lemcio, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Seattle Pacific University, taught there for thirty-six years. He earned an M.Div. from Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Cambridge University (Trinity College). Gene began his academic career at Houghton College with a B.S. in zoology (and a minor in chemistry).

Eugene came to faith among a tiny congregation of pre-WW1 and post-WW2 Ukrainian Baptist immigrants in Chester, PA. Later immersion in the intellectual and spiritual traditions of Anglo-Methodism acquainted him with the so-called "Wesleyan Quadrilateral": Scripture, reason, tradition and experience (=experiment).